Hacker News Reader

Comment by gaha | Hacker News Reader

The EU has exported 41 millionen vaccine doses of which the UK has gotten 8 million so far [1]. Meanwhile, the UK and US do not export any vaccines at all. So just as a back of the envelope calculation, with 41 millionen doeses the EU could have vaccinated an additional 10% of its population, while the UK would have had more than 10% less vaccinatetions without those 8 million. This would not completetly close the gap, but the numbers would be quite different then.

Anyway, you can interpret this in a postivie way: the EU is trying to be good and is sharing its vaccinations more or less fairly with other countries (for now). However, you can also see it as the EU has no real power at all and is just an easy target to get fooled over by other countries..

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-eu-not-ready-to-share-covi...

View on HN

Nonsense. This isn’t really about countries exporting/not exporting. These vaccine deals are with private companies who produce their product around the world. Just because vaccines are manufactured in a specific country doesn’t make them property of that country.

Whichever country is contractually at the front of the line will have their order fulfilled first/according to the terms of the contracts.

The EU wasted months negotiating lower prices and then took longer with approvals.

There is no good guy or bad guy (at least until the UK or EU blocks exports preventing execution of the private contracts - at that point the country blocking the exports becomes the bad guy).

> Nonsense. This isn’t really about countries exporting/not exporting. These vaccine deals are with private companies who produce their product around the world. Just because vaccines are manufactured in a specific country doesn’t make them property of that country.

The US used the national defense production act to block any export of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine produced in the US to other countries, so no, this is not just "These vaccine deals are with private companies who produce their product around the world." - countries can and do influence these deals if it benefits them. UK did the same thing.

The U.K. did not do the same as the US.

Don’t conflate the ability to negotiate carefully with banning exports. The private company AZ signed a contract with the British govt according to which they can export once they have delivered the agreed doses to the U.K. the faster they deliver on their commitments, the faster they can start exporting. No one forced them to sign the deal and no one in the UK is banning exports of the vaccine.

This is hair splitting, because the effect is exactly the same. The UK made sure not to export any vaccines until it has more than enough. This is exactly what the the US is doing, even if they use technically slightly different means.

Having a preferential contract with a single supplier is not remotely the same as imposing export controls on every supplier within a territory. The EU is and always has been allowed to source vaccines from the UK and the fact it voluntarily chose not to does not mean it was 'effectively' banned from doing so. The British government spent months and tens of millions of pounds setting up the AZ supply chain while the EU were haggling over its contract. It's not then unreasonable for the British government to require that it has priority on the supply it was instrumental in creating.

How is it hair splitting?

If the EU had paid for the vaccine's development, they could have had the deal instead.

But they didn't.

You just confirmed my point. The EU -in contrast to the US and the UK- did not want any exclusivity. They wanted collaboration and a fair distribution of vaccines. They negotiated on a EU level exactly to avoid any nationalistic competition. I am not saying that the US/UK strategy is bad in any objective way. I am just saying that it is the same strategy.

The only reason it was AZ instead of Merck was because the UK blocked the Oxford/Merck deal so they could force AZ to agree to “UK first” contracts.

More that UK govt anticipated US first position and didn’t want to be beholden to it.

That definitely could be, although the Merck I'm referring to (which Oxford was about to sign a deal with) is German.

Jolly good they did that too as Merck is a US company, not an EU one.

And US companies ARE under an export ban.

So your point is?

Don't conflate Merck with Merck. There's two "Merck", one is Merck KGaA, which is a German company, and the other one is Merck & Co. Inc., which is the US company. These are independent entities today, they just share a common history by originally being a German company, of which the US company was splitted off during WW1.

The Oxford/Merck deal would have been with Merck KGaA, as far as I know. The US government would have had no means to apply export bans to a German-based company.

I have no knowledge beyond what I just heard from you.

That sounded implausible. The country which had the ability to negotiate that happened to be the same country where the doses were manufactured? Why couldn't the UK apply its careful negotiating skills elsewhere too?

Alternative hypothesis: the credible implicit or explicit threats of a ban were what enabled the deal. "Sign this or else."

The UK government provided a lot of the money to AZ to build out the local vaccine supply chain and factories. Those factories most likely wouldn't exist unless the UK government had paid that money. So, as part of paying for all that, they asked for timed exclusively.

Also remember the vaccine was developed by Oxford using a significant amount of UK government funding, and was licensed to other countries, such as India, for low cost manufacturing.

We did also buy a lot of vaccine from other places (e.g. Pfizer which is also being widely deployed). But with AZ in particular (and to some extent Novavax) there was a focus on building a local supply chain so that countries can't play games with our vaccine supply. Supposedly Pfizer turned down the offer to build UK based factories.

> The UK government provided a lot of the money to AZ to build out the local vaccine supply chain and factories

So did the EU.

> Also remember the vaccine was developed by Oxford using a significant amount of UK government funding

And Biontech was developed with German funding. Did Germany insist on exclusivity? Maybe we should have...

Another hypothesis: Oxford was originally going to partner with Merck [1] but there were no supply guarantees in that contract. AstraZeneca was willing to give guarantees and run production in the UK, so the UK government leaned on Oxford and had them partner with the more agreeable supplier.

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-rejected-contracts-and-a...

I don’t know why you presuppose the U.K. is where it would have had to be manufactured. Manufacture in the U.K. appears to have been made to happen at the insistence and investment of the U.K. government, from my recollection of a thread by an Oxford researcher involved.

There appears to be a similar deal with Novavax to setup similar domestic capacity in the UK for its vaccine.

Even if the UK was threatening AZ with an export ban, they didn’t force AZ to accept those terms. AZ could have just said no and made the U.K. government look incompetent and unleashed media scrutiny on BoJo.

Yes, having the industrial base is part of the attraction of the UK for pharmaceutical companies. As is having a skilled workforce and a reliable system of laws.

I’m rejecting your original point about the U.S. and U.K. doing the same thing, which they aren’t.

Well, the motivation and effect is exactly the same which is what most people care about in the end. It's a nationalistic move which is what makes your day if you're a nationalist.

And they signed an agreement with the EU saying they have no such prioritisation deal with anyone else.

This is not what the contract says. The contract says there is no other contract that would prevent them fulfilling the EU contract. Since the contract makes no promises about delivery schedule it’s pretty clear the U.K. contract does not prevent its fulfilment, as the U.K. contract can only delay it.

However the EU contract seems to insist the initial 300M doses are made within the EU itself, and the EU has its own dedicated supply chain regardless that can eventually deliver, so this also seems to exclude conflict with the U.K. contract.

>"The US used the national defense production act to block any export of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine produced in the US to other countries"

This is false. The DPA was invoked in order to a) block the export of certain raw materials in order to prioritise local production of vaccines and b) to compel drugmaker Merck to help produce its competitor Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.[1] It does not block the export of vaccines. The White House clarified this last week as well.

[1] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2021/03/02/biden-administrati...

However, the US government was able to block export of AstraZeneca, apparently due to having purchased the vaccine:

The U.S. Is Sitting on Tens of Millions of Vaccine Doses the World Needs https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/politics/coronavirus-a...

US agrees to share AstraZeneca vaccines with Mexico, Canada https://amp.france24.com/en/americas/20210319-closing-in-on-...

The US government purchased those. They own those doses and so they are not AstraZenca's to sell.

From your own nytimes link:

>"Last May, the Trump administration pledged up to $1.2 billion to AstraZeneca to finance the development and manufacturing of its vaccine, which it developed with the University of Oxford, and to supply the United States with 300 million doses if it proved effective."

AstraZenca is free to export any vaccine beyond their contractual obligation of those doses. Jane Psaki confirmed as much in her WH press conference on Thursday.

The EU paid AstraZeneca to stockpile vaccines as well. AstraZeneca exported those to the UK

>Whichever country is contractually at the front of the line will have their order fulfilled first/according to the terms of the contracts.

Tell that to Canada. They were securing doses from day one and still suffered from delayed shipments and now have to contend with countries of manufacture forbidding export. What really pisses me off is that the US Gov had 30 million doses of Astra for several months and it it isn't even approved for use. Why hoard it when you can save lives in other countries while you have no intention of using it soon if ever? Sure they might get their approval in May or June but by then I expect the other manufacturers to have ramped up to cover everyone everywhere.

My understanding is that the manufacturer of the vaccine didn't apply for emergency approval- they are letting it go through a longer process by their own choice.

There might be perfectly valid reasons for this- I am not sure to what extent the government could or would want to force it to fast-track.

The manufacturer didn't apply for EUA because the European trial was a mess, and there was basically no chance of FDA approval based on the data they had.

The FDA is already reluctant to use trials from jurisdictions that may be very different demographically. When the trials are marginal, confused, and confounded, the chance of a FDA approval become negligible.

If the AZ US trial pops out good data, you can expect a speedy EUA application.

The us trail has completed with appearently good data. This just came out today so no surprise you didn't know about it yet.

So it seems! So, yes, that's a nice bonus if it gets authorized here.

Probably the same reason why the manufacturer hasn't requested EU approval of the Dutch plant where they manufacture vaccines exported to the UK. That is, to make more money.

AZ is bound by its IP agreement with Oxford University to sell at cost for the time being. By now, I thought people would know that.

AZ sells at cost

Sorry but this is a lie.

Canada put all their eggs in the CanSino vaccine even though they knew they had a bad relationship with China. This summer China conveniently blocked all progress and Canada was left scrambling. Blame Trudeau not the US.

It's silly making comments like that when a simple Google search proves I'm not lying.

Article

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/canada-locks-in-20...

After securing 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, they exercised an option in early Jan 2021 for another 20 million.

Article

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2020/12/16/why-did-...

Canada has purchased 40 million doses from Moderna, and expects delivery of up to 168,000 doses before the end of December 2020

Article

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/canada-the-biggest-hoard...

Canada the biggest hoarder of COVID-19 vaccine pre-orders in First World, NGOs say

I don’t think this is true? I recall an infographie from before vaccines had been deployed anywhere which showed where all of the countries were sourcing their vaccines from, in what quantities, etc, and I believe Canada was buying all sorts of vaccines so they would have much redundancy in case problems arose with any of them.

This does not resemble truth. Canada bought in to a ton of vaccines. Something like 6 doses per Canadian worth.

You are lying. Canada has ordered 7 times the amount of population. From different manufacturers. You’re making things up.

Biggest problem of Canada? There’s no local manufacture. And yes you can blame the liberals for that. Your anti Chinese talking point is not based in facts.

>"What really pisses me off is that the US Gov had 30 million doses of Astra for several months and it it isn't even approved for use."

The drugmaker must apply for emergency use authorization before it can't be approved in the first place. They still have not applied for EUA as of today.

The time-wasting meme is a lie from the UK Government. The UK contract was signed after the EU contract. They posted the contract by accident which was picked up on in some of the press. It also had the same clauses as the EU.

On the other hand the UK still has a fully nationalised health service which means that it was in a much better position to be able to scale the vaccinations. That's probably the real reason that they're ahead.

Give it another 10 years of Tory rule and they'll "catch down" to the rest of the world.

This is a misunderstanding, as incidentally is the claim that the UK contract was signed three months earlier, because in both cases there is the assumption that there is "a" contract and no money flowed or contractual obligations were created before then. The reality is that in both cases, memoranda of understanding, investment agreements, and all sorts of other documents also exist and in some cases were signed earlier. In particular, there were agreements first with Oxford and then with AZ to start scaling capacity very early and even before the notional purchase contract signature in May (that's the one that was later superseded at the same time as the final EU contract was signed).

So it is simultaneously true that they signed a contract within a few days of each other, but also not quite the full picture.

The original claim regarding the EU dragging its feet over signing the contract was made by the AstraZeneca CEO, not the UK government. And the UK's contract is not entirely the same as the EU's. For example, the EU waived its right to sue AstraZeneca for delivery failures, something the UK did not. This article by Politico does a good job of going beyond the rather reductive coverage (both pro-UK and pro-EU) in most of the press coverage of this affair, and digging more deeply into the facts:

https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...

The conclusion, at least as I interpret it, is that both the UK and the EU can reasonably claim to have priority, based on their respective contracts, but that the UK did a better job than the EU in making theirs enforceable. Hence, AstraZeneca has prioritised them, while the EU has been forced to resort to political rather than legal measures to attempt redress (publishing the contract, export controls, etc.). And the UK's closer ties to the AstraZeneca vaccine project likely did mean they started work on the UK supply chain somewhat earlier than in the EU, even although the final contracts were signed essentially simultaneously (one day apart).

I honestly don't really see this as an affair with clear good guys and bad guys, but it seems like most people are determined to do so, and inevitably along the lines of their pre-existing sympathies.

Part of the issue, and this is something that both AZ and the EC fucked up in their contract negotiations is not thinking about this contingency. "Best reasonable efforts" is pretty clear... if you only have one customer.

If you have multiple customers, who signed slightly different contracts at different times, and who also have different side agreements regarding specific facilities they may have paid for in part or in whole, you really need to define how you make allocation decisions in case of shortfall so that everyone understands their risk exposure.

I will personally hold the EC responsible because although AZ has also messed up by not negotiating a clearer contract, it is the EC that indirectly works for me and it is their job to think about this on my and my family's behalf. Had they understood the consequences of being so far back in the production queue much earlier they could have spent more on upgrading production but it is not clear to me that they even understood this until January. While I'm sure that they are trying their best, and bad luck with Sanofi plays a part here as well (as does the incompetence of e.g. the Dutch government in managing distribution), I am pretty unimpressed with how they have dropped the ball here.

It's not good them saying, "oh AZ isn't producing as much as they thought they would". Ok, cool story bro but they're making a novel biological, so you should have anticipated this and done more to prepare plans B, C, all the way through F. Not just placed a few commercial orders and then hope it all works out.

But if the contract states there are no competing customers, and talks about 4 different sites, I'd say most bases should have been covered. Az then turning around, and using three of these sites exclusively for UK production (since it was 'first') kinda defeats that.

Then there is indeed a difference in contract law, where the UK is far more focused on the letter of the contract, while European law is more about 'what could have been done'.

In the middle of a pandemic there isn't much we can do against pharmaceuticals. In the mean while has Az delivered more than Moderna until now. So, we should take what we can. Only thing we could blame the EC on is that we should not have based our strategy of vaccinating out on such an unreliable, inexperienced partner with a complicated biological process. Looking back and keeping the Pfizer vaccin European would have been less naive, but we would have started these vaccins wars. Will be interesting what the long term consequences are of having UK and US vaccinated two months sooner. I don't think Europe will forget this.

I think the underlying problem is that there is just not any real cooperation on global vaccine distribution. Certainly the details about the enforceability of the various contracts wouldn't matter if the customers all talk between themselves and agree on what would be acceptable modifications of the delivery schedule.

In the event, it seems neither Boris nor Biden seem very interested in considering anyone else before they've scored enough points at home, and meanwhile real international cooperation on vaccine deliveries is dead. Oh well, hope not all trade follows that pattern shrug.

Sources? I've heard the "EU signed before UK" multiple times now, but nobody ever links to a source. It just seems unlikely, no? Why would they be so catastrophically far behind in that case?

Similarly - the NHS is great, but not unique. Norway for example has a system akin to the NHS (and so do many EU countries) and there's no correlation there. Norway is waaaaay behind the UK and the US. Again, it seems unlikely that the NHS is the cause.

It's obvious you hate the Tories, but that shouldn't cloud your judgment to such a degree that you fail to celebrate the real achievement of the UK's vaccination rate.

It's my impression that the vaccination program in Denmark is very efficient just like in the UK. However, the speed is limited by the vaccine imports which are governed by deals made by the EU. I would think that Norway is similarly limited by imports. (They are not in the EU so probably are making deals at a national level.)

Individual member states can approve their own vaccines. Look at Hungary. Italy wants to use and manufacture the Russian vaccine, but the EMA hasn’t approved it yet. Why not?

The EU “time-wasting meme” comes from a direct quote from the AZ CEO.

According to Dominic Cummings recent select committee hearing, the vaccine programme was largely built outside/adjacent to any existing NHS processes. It was given NHS branding for public trust reasons (just like the new-from-the-ground-up Track and Trace endeavour).

The vaccination rollout programme is very much NHS. Vaccination is something the NHS does. So that shouldn’t be surprising.

Believe Cummings point was that The Department of Health wasn’t in control as it is in terms of test and trace. So NHS + Cabinet office (and not DHSC’s normal red tape, funding models) = success.

However, I think “sources” in the vaccination task force have said Cummings is full of it.

Administering each vaccine seems to be 100% NHS. While it is quite likely that Cummings is full of it, he did specifically mention that the vaccine task force works outside of the Department of Health.

“That is why we had to take the vaccine process out of the Department of Health.”

Q193, https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/1911/html/

No, EU countries definitely don’t get as many doses from AZ. Distribution is NOT the reason the UK are ahead, but earlier shipments.

> On the other hand the UK still has a fully nationalised health service which means that it was in a much better position to be able to scale the vaccinations. That's probably the real reason that they're ahead.

EU doesn't have problems with vaccination but with supply of vaccines, we use up all we can get (at least until AZ issues, now people are afraid to vaccinate with it).

There are many (all?) countries in EU that have health service nationalised in EU. The only country I know that doesn't is US.

Public Health care =/= nationalized health service

e.g. germany is holding up a ton of vaccines for the second shot right now, so no, we are not using everything we have. Supply is one thing, distribution is another. And the EU has trouble sorting out the latter, a problem that will hurt even when supply increases to a point were there will be more doses than needed around June/July.

Sure it’s private companies but it wasn’t random chance that led to AstraZeneca (a British–Swedish company) working with the Oxford group in the U.K. or Pfizer (an American company) with BioNTech. It’s a lot easier to control production when it happens within your borders (eg Trump did have some executive order banning exports but this was just symbolic when the defence production act was invoked.)

BioNTech is German and Pfizer is American. Am I missing something?

Pfizer has big factories in the US for making vaccines. How many does BioNTech have in Germany?

The current bottleneck in the Pfizer vaccine production is the last manufacturing stage — combining the mRNA with lipid nanoparticles. There are currently two plants for it, one in the US and one in Belgium. The US plant only delivers to the USA, the Belgian to the rest of the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVID-...

BioNtech has entered into an alliance[1] with 13 European companies to boost the vaccine production, as well as Chinese Fosun Pharma[2]. The agreement with Pfizer was important for the initial trials and production launch of the vaccine, but it's not binding and BioNtech is free to license the vaccine to other manufacturers (most likely under a different brand name from Comirnaty).

Also, BioNTech has partnered with German Evonik[3] and Merck[4] to accelerate vital lipids production by the second half of 2021.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/biontech-recruits-rivals-to-boo...

[2] https://endpts.com/biontech-teams-up-with-fosun-pharma-to-te...

[3] https://corporate.evonik.com/en/evonik-strengthens-strategic...

[4] https://www.merckgroup.com/en/news/biontech-strategic-partne...

They (BioNTech) themselves have only a few in Germany (2 or 3), but it's produced by other companies for them now as well totalling to around seven according to this German source: https://www.pharma-food.de/markt/standorte-corona-impfstoff-.... I say around because not all do the whole production sometimes only parts of it as it seems. Didn't dig very deep into it.

Trump never invoked the Defense Production Act.

He didn't need to, he used other methods -- signed an executive order putting Americans ahead for anything produced in the US.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trump-signs-order-to-put-ame...

Forced US allies to source from Pfizer's Belgium plant instead.

> President Trump first invoked the DPA in late March 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic...limiting the export of medical goods, increasing domestic production of masks and ventilators

https://www.lawfareblog.com/understanding-bidens-invocation-...

Nothing in there on vaccine export but one would assume it is implied.

It is not I don't think, but I could be wrong.

Yes he did: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/politics/trump-defense-produc...

Trump invoked the DPA for:

* protective equipment and ventilators

* specifically 3M and companies for masks and ventilators

* testing swabs

* diagnostic systems and assays

---

https://web.archive.org/web/20200318233011/https://www.white...

> Accordingly, I find that health and medical resources needed to respond to the spread of COVID-19, including personal protective equipment and ventilators, meet the criteria specified in section 101(b) of the Act (50 U.S.C. 4511(b)).

Note that this is the executive order for allowing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to do things...

> (c) The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall issue such orders and adopt and revise appropriate rules and regulations as may be necessary to implement this order.

It wasn't specifically saying "you, company, make this."

---

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/02/trump-expands-dpa-o...

> President Donald Trump on Thursday invoked the Defense Production Act to push 3M and six major medical device companies to produce protective masks and ventilators needed for the coronavirus outbreak, bowing to weeks of pressure to expand the federal government’s use of the emergency statute.

---

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/19/trump-dpa-testing-s...

> President Donald Trump will use the Defense Production Act to compel an unnamed company to produce 20 million more coronavirus testing swabs every month — weeks after labs and public health officials started warning that shortages of these swabs were hurting efforts to ramp up testing nationwide

---

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/08/20/trump-administrati...

> These acquisitions will fulfill a large-volume purchase of diagnostic systems and assays for COVID-19 testing and will expedite shipments of these systems and assays to every nursing home certified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services (CMS) with a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (CLIA) Certificate of Waiver – approximately 14,000 nursing homes – in the United States.

---

Further reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950...

Additionally - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-08/trump-vow...

> Trump raised the specter of invoking the Defense Production Act -- which allows the president to require companies to prioritize contracts deemed essential for national security -- if the U.S. struggles to obtain the vaccine for its citizens.

> “If we have any problems, we will be instituting the Defense Production Act and make sure we don’t have any problems,” he said.

Trump did not invoke the DPA for vaccines.

Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to prevent states from addressing COVID outbreaks in the meat packing industry.

Some people might say that deliberately accelerating the pandemic wasn't the best use of the DPA, but he certainly did use it.

But Biden did, right?

They both did. Trump did it for medical supplies a year earlier:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/understanding-bidens-invocation-...

Yep

I'd argue that in a time of crisis, the EU government is being negligent if it's not forcing domestic production capacity to prioritize output for domestic use.

If it nationalized the factories, or seized supply it hadn't ordered, I might consider it the bad guy. But irrespective of who gets the vaccines first, the EU has already bought the some portion of the supply.

> I'd argue that in a time of crisis, the EU government is being negligent if it's not forcing domestic production capacity to prioritize output for domestic use.

I understand that viewpoint but feel like the long term consequences politically would be too high. We live in a globalised world where most of the richest countries do little of their own manufacturing. If we start blocking exports in times of crisis the foundations of that system would be damaged.

The problem with this statement is that the EU is not a government - it is an intergovernmental body.

Nationalization etc. happens on the national level only.

Yes, but wrt nationalization, that was more a statement of where I would draw the line if I had to choose whether the EU was being a good/bad actor rather than the EU's actual capacity as an organization.

I would argye that the EU merits government status, given the degree to which it dictates standards in the eurozone. Even though it is fairly weak, and lacks enforcement capacity on its own, my understanding is that the EU as a body has the capacity to set standards for the block as a whole, restricting export of certain goods like the vaccine for example. I could be wrong, though?

The original comment, and this retort, sums up the argument in a nutshell. I see both sides of this one, offered both of these arguments to a friend last night. It's complicated, like most of these things.

Damn I hate saying this... but, to be fair to the pharma corps... ugh, I feel sick for saying that... manufacturing vaccines isn't like making plastic cups and straws. I'm in no way qualified to explain pharmaceutical production, but I highly doubt it's that simple to just Thanos snap produce these things. Equipment, QC, materials, whatever, it takes time. This on top of still having to produce all the other drugs we need to keep their pockets lined. Part two, I remember seeing something regarding specialty freezer storage for shelf life and general transport. I believe that's still valid? Not everywhere has the logistical bandwidth for transport or storage of this. Then take into the legally abiding procedures to ensure the safety of the drug itself, which we should all be thankful for. Piss poor pharma is already a problem as is, we don't need more issues. Then general legal hurdles of deployment and tracking, yada yada. This isn't like sewing up a mask, bubble wrap Fedex it out. Damn it, I defended pharma. I'm going to Hell for that.

The world as we now it runs on supply chains. And yet, pople still think electricity comes from a plug, milk from bottle in a supermarket. As does toilet paper, and we all know how that worked out last year. That people have the expectation that once a contract for a vaccine is signed, and the vaccine is approved, enough doses are immediately available to inculate everyone id dangerous. Especially since a lot of politicians seem to think exactly the same way.

Nobody ever said the job's going to be easy,hence so few doing it and hence such a high reward,in a case of success.

So both UK and US are bad guys since they're blocking all exports?

Per the above, no.

The UK purchased right of first refusal on the first 100million doses of Oxford/AZ produced in the UK factories that they funded.

The EU also funded factories (in the EU) but did not purchase right of first refusal only best efforts contracts.

The USA has a full ban on exports till they are ready to export.

There is no UK prohibition on exports.

The UK is not blocking exports. The EU were free to conclude contracts with the (not very productive) UK manufacturers at the same time HM government was doing so.

I’m aware of the US blocking exports of certain things but as far as I know the UK isn’t. If you have evidence proving otherwise I’d love to see.

> Whichever country is contractually at the front of the line will have their order fulfilled first/according to the terms of the contracts.

nope, the UK and the US have a "first us, then the rest" policy for exports, that the EU does not.

To be nonsense it would need to also not have happened in practice. The UK and the US have not exported the vaccines and kept them all for themselves. This is fact not nonsense.

The UK is already blocking exports. They basically paid off AZ to have the export ban written down in the contract.

You’re being fed misinformation. EU countries signed before the UK.

CEO of AstraZeneca: "But the UK contract was signed three months before the European vaccine deal." "When we entered the agreement with Oxford, they had already been working with the UK government on this. "

https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/01/26/news/interview_...

Its more complicated than that. These deal are not executed, the moment the final signature is signed.

Instead, there are multiple steps along the way, that matter much more than some singular data point of a very long contract process that has many stages.

Can you give a citation for that. The generally agreed figure is that it was done 3 months later. Bear in mind, the EU has still not even approved production from the AZ Halix plant. EU has generally been doing things slower than the UK.

Sure. Here you go - https://www.france24.com/en/20200613-covid-19-france-italy-g...

The Vaccine Alliance did a contract with AstraZeneca before the UK. The Alliance was Germany, Italy, Netherlands and France.

AstraZeneca says this "doesn't count". I believe this was around 1 month before the UK agreement was signed.

Here's another article that goes over it https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-s...

And here's the press release up on Reuters https://www.france24.com/en/20200613-covid-19-france-italy-g...

https://uk.ambafrance.org/Inclusive-Vaccines-Alliance-reache...

And in the French embassy..

You're being fed BS. AZ signed with the Alliance, that contract was turned over to the EU comission. AZ is most likely caught up in giving their vaccine to the UK first and they are lying constantly. See the controversy on their efficacy in the US.

Hmm. I did a quick scan read over the Politico article, but I'm confused. It doesn't seem to be about contracts and the words "contract" and "alliance" don't appear in it. Did you copy/paste the wrong link?

I also tried the two France24 links. They're both 404 Not Founds. The final link is also a 404. That's a bit odd. Where are you getting these links from? At any rate, the result is you've not provided any evidence that AZ is lying, which is a very bold claim to begin with. Why would they do that? AZ is part Swedish and has a Greek CEO, it's not like they're a 100% pure British firm of tub-thumping Brexit supporting patriots who inexplicably don't want to supply Europe with vaccine. Although by now I wouldn't be surprised if they're thoroughly sick of the EU and its games.

Meanwhile the EU has:

a) The motive to lie.

b) A track record of doing so repeatedly, a completely undeniable one.

It's ridiculous how often the EU or leaders of members states have said totally untrue things about this vaccine or the UK, I made a list at some point (see my old comments) and within a week there'd been another two lies coming out of Europe. I'm not the one being fed BS here - in many of those cases Europe's leaders have already admitted they'd said untrue things!

The EU hasn't approved AZ Halix because AZ hasn't applied yet: https://www.ft.com/content/8e2e994e-9750-4de1-9cbc-31becd2ae... (apologies for the paywall).

Relevant quote:

Asked about the Halix situation, the commission said on Friday that the EMA was ready to fast-track authorisation of new production facilities once it received an application and the necessary information from AstraZeneca.

I don't really understand what's going on with the Halix plant, but surely there must be more to it than that. There's presumably no way the EMA are just sitting there going "well we can't do anything until they mail us over the papers".

Certainly the UK MHRA have been working closely with the companies to move the process along very quickly, as has been confirmed by both the government and the companies themselves.

I'm curious to know what's really going on at the Halix plant.

The official line from these companies always seems to be that they were able to ramp up production to make the vaccines for the UK because the UK committed to its order signficantly earlier than the EU. (I've never seen this next bit said explicitly, but the subtext, as I read it, is that the EU was holding out for a better price.)

Of course I don't know the accuracy of such statements. But if that is true, you could certainly argue it would unfair that the EU should benefit from production capacity that only exists because of commitments made by the UK, and the location of the factories is fairly irrelevant to that.

You could counter argue that I am mistakenly treating the "EU" and "UK" as a single individual person each who deserves to suffer the consequences of their actions, when in fact the people suffering are individual citizens who had almost no control over the negotiation process. But, on the flip side, if companies cannot rely on agreements made during difficult negotiations to be honoured then it will be harder to secure such agreements in future.

A good summary of EU problems is described [1]. Washington and London understood that crucial to mass procurement was throwing large amounts of R&D money at many companies in hopes some would work. Brussels focused on haggling down the cost per dose. Europeans pay a few dollars less per dose but ended near the back of the shipment line.

[1] http://archive.is/M0bjW

Which is too simplistic. The UK, the US and the EU depend on their local manufacturing capacity. That capacity is limited, regardless initial delivery schedules were sufficient for herd immunity in the EU around June/July with a significant surplus in Q3/4. That surplus was slated to be shared with developing countries.

Solid plan, solid procurement strategy. But after that procurement, nothing. No coordination of national campaigns with manufacturers, no planning on local and regional level, no operational procurement plan. And the list goes on.

So why the UK/US numbers are way ahead of EU?

Good question. Based on my experience in SCM I would say a combination of circumstances, luck and better management.

The UK had a head start (due to earlier approval of the AZ vaccine, they were the second ones after the Russins and before the US), of one and a half months or so. The UK gotlucky that AZs prodution in the UK went smoother than the one in Belgium. And cirumstances are in favour of the UK, initial deliviery volumes are low accross the board, regardless of supplier, and a smaller population allows higher per capita numbers in these cases.

The main reason so, IMHO, is the UKs approach and management of the campaign. With NHS, theUK coud build upon one entitiy to run things, the UK streched the second shot and didn't hold inventory back for it. And the UK seems to have proper operational supply chain management in place.

The EU (meaning individual member states) on the other hand has a larger population, at least 27 individual entities (Germany adds 16 individual states to that), o central planning (Germany has none on the federal level and I haven't seen any on state level so far neither), no coherent strategy. Appointment managment doesn't work. The EU also screwed up supply by ordering more in january (volumes that weren't needed) which resulted in further delays. And the list goes on.

In a nut shell, the UK didnt screw with the suppliers supply chains up to end f production and has a grip on the down stream supply chain up to peoples arms. The EU screwed with suppliers and has zero plan about everything after doses are delivered to a national distribution hub.

EDIT: The EU has to coordinate 27 nations and has to avoid an EU-internal bidding war. The UK doesn't.

It's worth remembering the UK bought 3x as many doses per capita than the EU (of AZ), and its domestic manufacturing capacity anyway has to serve a much smaller population. The luck in large part is the Ox/AZ was successful and fast, and the UK had placed a very large order for it.

Yep. The EU on the other hand spread the risk across multiple suppliers. One of which fell through so far, Sanofi if memory serves well. I for my part have no issue with the procurement strategy. The contracts, assuming they are all similar to the AZ one, are crap so.

And after contract signature, the EU basically took a step back. The EU did tell member states that logistics will be critical, and that logistics will be up to member states to sort out. Kind of right, but also kind of lazy. Even lazier are member states that failed to sort logistics out. Especially those that were fast to blame the EU for that.

Because around half the EU production is exported whereas until a few days ago exactly 0% of the US and UK production were.

"Until a few days ago" because the US just recently agreed to send some vaccine to Canada. For the first time. Canada had been getting vaccine produced in the EU. UK is still at 0.

Right about USA. Wrong about UK.

USA has effectively banned export. UK signed a better deal (https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...), three months earlier, and as a result all AZ vaccine produced domestically in the UK is going to UK Citizens, and they are higher up the queue for AZ product manufactured in the EU. This produces the same effect as an export ban (i.e. domestic production used entirely by country), but is really just the result of competent procurement.

https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/01/26/news/interview_...

EU shat the bed by penny pinching. Don't paint incompetence as "humanitarian efforts"

The EU shat the bed by not banning all exports just like the US did. It's insane to me that the EU allowed 41 million vaccine doses produced INSIDE the EU to be exported to other countries while Europeans are dying and in lockdown.

What makes this so painful for me is that person responsible, the comission president von der Leyen, was not actually elected by the people.

We need some massive reforms and rebuilding after this. There already was a lot of EU scepticism, and instead of taking this opportunity to shine, they completely squandered it and destroyed trust.

> What makes this so painful for me is that person responsible, the comission president von der Leyen, was not actually elected by the people.

Forgive me for picking on this, but I see it regularly come up whenever the deficit of democracy in the EU is discussed and I completely disagree with that assessment.

The President of the US is not elected by "the people". The PMs of most countries are invited to form a government by the head of state, not directly by the people. This is a common feature in many democracies, executive roles are not directly elected and are instead picked based on support by parliamentary majorities. The President of the European Commission is elected by the Parliament, which is itself elected directly by the people of the EU. I see absolutely no problem there.

There are other things which deserve more attention, like the disproportionate amount of power the Council has vis a vis the Commission and the Parliament.

Thanks for being the 1000 person to explain this to me.

They promised before the election that the candidate of the strongest party would get the job.

The whole plan was to strengthen the parliament, and the whole promise was broken after the election, _because_ the council wanted to make sure the parliament and commission are kept weak.

Whenever I have this discussion people for some reasons assume I don't know even the most basic mechanics of the system I critize.

And the same people always conveniently forget what we were promised during the election campaign. All parties agreed to make the candidate of the strongest party after the election the commission president. They all promised that.

Von der Leyen is the council and national governments taking a dump on the parliament. And it didn stop there! During the backroom deals that lead to this, the parliament negotiated that they will only play along if they finally get more power.

Fast forward a couple of months and they got stiffed and insulted again. The brexit deal i.e. was an affront to parliament, because they didn't even get to vote it on it. The vaccine deals were kept secret from them. And on and on and on.

The only directly elected body in the EU is constantly being disrespected.

You act like these are separate problems, but the fact that we got von der Leyen, who didn't even run in the election, IS THE SAME thing as the problem of Power of council vs. Commission vs. Parliament. The later caused the former.

(Sorry for the tone, I got angry, but not at you. Please read it in mickey mouse voice to take the edge off.)

I think your perspective is fair.

Personally, I think that the Commission should be directly elected by the Parliament from it's members, which would make it much more similar to the national governments.

I'm not sure the Council (i.e. the member states) would agree to that though.

At least since Lisbon, the EP has some (not enough) power over Commissioners.

I agree. This would also mean there have to be coalition negotiations. It would drastically increase the public debate across Europe and give people more stake in what is going on.

This is not by some accident of history. It is a deliberate decision of euro-skeptic countries to avoid turning the EU into a superstate. It is usually the same countries who then go to complain about the "democratic deficit" of the EU institutions. I went through the Brexit referendum debates and the hypocrisy was rank.

Exactly. This is one the first things we have to fix. The relationship between the nations government and the EU is in parts absurd.

What’s absurd about it?

I.e. national governments using EU to pass legislation, which they then oppose locally, claiming the evil EU is forcing it upon them against their will.

Generally, blaming all bad things on the EU and acting like it's a foreign power whenever it servers their needs, obfuscating the the national governments are the ones with most power over EU decisions.

It is possible for the EU to both have a democratic deficit, and for the completely opaque and unaccountable process for choosing the head of the Commission to be a part of that. Bear in mind, the EU Parliament is not a real parliament, so it does not improve things much when the 'spitzenkandidaten' is selected. That's how Juncker happened, a literal alcoholic. EU always ends up with failures at the top, it seems to be an unwritten law.

Commission president was decided by the heads of each democratically elected government - so Merkel, Sanchez, Johnson, Macron etc.

Just like in the UK where the PM is elected by each democratically elected MP

> Just like in the UK where the PM is elected by each democratically elected MP

That's not the case. The PM is appointed by the Monarch, who will almost always choose the leader of the party able to command a majority in the House of Commons. That leader will be chosen according to the rules of their party. Boris Johnson won an election where all eligible members of the Conservative Party had a vote; it is the case that the shortlist of two was decided by MPs.

The PM is also a regular MP and has to be elected by their local constituency voters.

Technically of course, however the monarch is "advised" by the previous prime minster, who by convention tells her the person who can command confidence the house, which is the person who will get 50%+1 of the votes.

If we're being technical the PM does not have to be an elected MP, and can be from the house of lords.

They promised us that the candidate of the strongest party will get the job.

Isn't the EVP the strongest block in the EU parliament right now?

Yes, but the candidate was Weber. Von der Leyen didn't even run for parliament.

It was all a big deuce dropped on the parliament, really. The parliament is the only directly elected body in the EU, and the nations governments hate the idea that it could gain any kind of real power.

Yes, this was a major regressive move compared with 2014 and the spitzenkandidat

The move was caused by the democratically elected heads of government of the member nations (including the UK at that time), not by the commission.

P.S. in the UK the last time someone became PM the morning after winning a majority in a general election was 1997. The time before that was 1979.

Major, Brown, May, Johnson were all selected by their party members

Thatcher, Blair led parties that won an election (although less than 50% of the vote)

Cameron won a plurarity of the seats in parliament but required both Tory and Lib Dem agreement

The idea in the UK of the PM being elected is very rare.

The German chancellor is elected the same way. There is nothing preventing a candidate change after the election, plus there is no way to tell which coalition will actually form. And still almost nobody would argue that the German federal government isn't democratically legitimized.

yawn.. why do you brexiteers even care about EU anymore? The European Commission isn't directly elected by citizens in the EU but the President of the Commission needs to be approved by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who are elected by voters from member states. MEPs also vote on whether to approve Commissioners who are nominated by governments of member states. In no country citizens directly elect the government. EU commission EU's government. The commission president is equivalent with a PM

I'm Austrian and pro EU.

We were promised that the candidate of the strongest party in the parliament election will get the job.

Every time this comes up people explain to me again what I already know, and never ever they seem to remember what the people were promised before the election.

That system was propagated by the two “Spitzenkandidaten” themselves. It’s not a law nor did the national governments sign up for it.

So yes, it was a bit of deception, created as part of of a fight between institutions. Just about nobody decided their vote based on these candidates, anyway.

If nothing that is being promised during an election actually matters, we really don't have to keep pretending like this is a democracy.

Boris Johnson wasn’t elected directly (as prime minister), either. Nor Merkel. Or, for that matter, Biden.

The simple reform is to not have EU handle vaccine procurement anymore.

Valid opinion, but I disagree.

Fair disagreement!

I'm sure that would work out fine for the wealthy EU countries. Though the small countries might not have the same leverage.

But in the long run, wouldn't it be bad for all of us, if it takes eastern European countries a lot longer to reopen?

This whole topic is about how the EU screwed up the whole thing.

It would be hard for individual countries to do any worse.

Tiny Israel did vastly better that the EU, so the size of the EU clearly didn't help.

It sounds like the EU needs deconstruction not more construction. Go back to a free trade zone, not a super government.

I would love for the EU to even give glimpses of a super government; what I see is fractal bureaucracy. Every crysis that seems to come up, it's a show of people in suits, negociating and coming up with plans and commisions and big worded manifests, and coming up with solutions sometimes decades after the initial spark.

I come from Central Eastern Europe i.e. the poor people of the great EU. Our government is incompetent, corrupt, all the stereotypical attributes, and somehow, the most incompetent, lazy and corrupt end up Europoliticians (note: this is not a rule, there are exceptions). It's almost like a status symbol of when you beat the system; you get a nice cozy place where you do nothing. I am highly skeptical that we are alone in this.

Then, from a ground level, as someone that wants to love the European Union and can see the great economic benefits it brought us since joining, I can't help but stare in awe as all the brain gets drained from my country. Every single capable person has to decide whether they want to stay here and basically fight for scraps or go to the west where they get money they couldn't dream of here.

Sorry for the rant, your mention of a super government made me irrationaly angry at something I can't have, or don't want in its current form, and your deconstruction point is very much aligned with what I think needs to happen' currently.

The idea of a competent super government encompassing 700 million people is a fantasy. Instead, as the EU heads toward more integration you’ll see more of the debilitating infighting that makes the US government so dysfunctional. Once Germany and France start chipping into the common tax base, your politics will become preoccupied with telling Poland it has to have abortion or something similar. When you’re subsidizing someone else you feel entitled to tell them how to live.

Visa and borders won't stop capable people from migrating out of the country that you are amusingly planning to fix by isolation. It didn't before you joined the bloc, it won't after you "deconstruct the EU" — and you know it well.

As long as you have precisely pinpointed the issue with supplying EP with incompetent MEPs (a common problem among most members of the bloc today, arguably including the appointment of Ursula von der Leyen), you've resorted to a completely destructive resolution of deconstructing the EU. As a punishment for the failures of your homeland, I suppose? "Bad EU did it, not our fault" is such a common trope among local politicians (hallo Österreich[1] from the latest news) and some citizens.

The solution is in fixing your domestic politics, not dragging your capable citizens and fellow European neighbors down. It's solely thanks to the European Union's common approach[2] that the small/poor members of the bloc have truly equal access to vaccines. Otherwise small countries would have never been able to outbid rich Germany, France, UK, Netherlands and other power states on the free market. As you understand, there are no benefits for Germany, France et al. in this collective decision, they're literally paying with the lives of their citizens for the idea of the EU. A little gratitude.

By being in the same boat, we will together overcome pandemic, poverty and political incompetence. You're free to disagree, just don't pretend that your local brexit will go swimmingly — it isn't rosy even for such a developed country as the UK.

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/austria-seeks-to-pin-blame-o...

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/commissions-centralis...

>A little gratitude

Oh please, rich EU countries haven't accepted the eastern block countries in the EU out of charity, they did it because it benefited them massively.

Big French and German businesses could now export their products to millions more people without tariffs and relocate production there lowering the cost and making insane profits.

Danish, French, Dutch and Austrian banks took over the banking business in the eastern block offering the citizens there much higher fees and interests than they would in their home countries, again, making massive profits which got funneled back "home".

IKEA, German and Austrian furniture and logging companies are heavily involved in illegal deforestation in Romania via bribes and corruption.

Austrian construction companies are often involved in corruption scandals for shitty and massively overpriced infrastructure projects in the Eastern Block, some with EU money even.

And not to mention the workforce and 'brain drain' that moved to the west benefiting the businesses, both white collar and especially agriculture, and also the landlords there on a huge scale.

The EU expansion has been a massive wealth transfer project of taxpayer money from rich countries to the big businesses and asset owners of the same rich countries, funneled through the newer poorer members in form of various EU projects. And of course the poorer members then get the blame by the populist politicians in the richer countries because they're "stealing your tax Euros and your jobs" even though their policies directly enabled and supported this wealth and job transfer in the first place as it benefited the big and well connected businesses in their countries.

> Oh please, rich EU countries haven't accepted the eastern block countries in the EU out of charity, they did it because it benefited them massively.

Oh, you know perfectly well which paragraph you pulled this sentence from. Nothing will sell the idea of exchanging tens of thousands of lives for some kind of commercial benefits for some large companies to the citizens of advanced European countries, if the citizens themselves didn't believe in the European Union. It just doesn't work like that in Europe.

> Big French and German businesses could now export their products to millions more people without tariffs and relocate production there lowering the cost and making insane profits.

Yeah, these pesky businesses optimize costs and seek profits, who would have thought. They do it while developing the industry and create a pool of high-grade (Germany and Western Europe is known for quality goods) specialists in regions where such competencies have often never existed. It's all obvious, the same thing is repeated again and again. You know who else benefits? Competitive companies from the poorer/newer members of the bloc, which now have a massive open market to compete due to the lower OpEx/labor costs, and essentially pushing stagnant players out of their home markets. E.g. my customers are a small factory supplying manufactured goods and high quality services all over the EU, especially Sweden, Germany and Switzerland—for a much lower price. My company is able to provide SWE solutions for companies in France and Finland just like to local businesses. Some of my partners run a 3-employees SWE consulting company from home offices in Estonia, providing services for a particular Spanish fintech enterprise as if it were across the street. It wouldn't be possible without the EU, the market is truly open and transparent without red taping.

> Austrian construction companies are often involved in corruption scandals for shitty and massively overpriced infrastructure projects in the Eastern Block, some with EU money even.

I don't get it, this is just ridiculous. You do realize that corrupt governments and institutions are exploited by foreign forces all the time, it doesn't have to be European? China[1][2] and Russia[3] are heavily involved in such activities, both are outside the EU. What's your point? It's not EU's fault that some Eastern politicians/institutions are corrupt, but this is its prospect problem and responsibility[4], I'd agree with that.

> The EU expansion has been a massive wealth transfer project of taxpayer money from rich countries to the bg businesses and asset owners of the same rich countries, funneled through the newer poorer members in form of various EU projects.

These allegations run counter to the economic growth charts of almost all countries that have joined the European Union. This definitely contradicts the economic situation in Estonia (again, Eastern Europe); also below is a reply by an Irish citizen, country which got richer after joining the bloc.

You're clearly reaching the anti-EU narrative with your exploitation/corruption claims, and you do it quite lazily. As I said, start by putting things in order in your home country, and then threaten or moan at the "oppressive" European Union. If you don’t change your mind by then.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/18681026209631...

[2] https://www.amo.cz/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/AMO_central-eu... (PDF)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Laundromat

[4] https://www.iwkoeln.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Studien/Report/... (PDF)

> The solution is in fixing your domestic politics

This logic is akin to forcibly beating someone with their own hand and asking "why do you beat yourself". When the best people leave then it's blindingly obvious they aren't available to fix domestic politics, isn't it?

And as eastern europe does not have colonial past, there isn't large pool of brains that know local language and can be drained from third world to replace people who left.

I think it's in interest of whole EU that best people stay in their countries. Instead of just sending money via cohesion funds, it should think about creating local opportunities for them.

I dunno man, it can work. I'm from Ireland and back when we were a poor country, everyone left for the UK, US or Australia. Mind you, that was true before we joined the EU.

However, because of the EU, we were able to get a lot richer, and now people actually come to Ireland for work (which still blows my mind, even though it's normal now).

> This logic is akin to forcibly beating someone with their own hand and asking "why do you beat yourself". When the best people leave then it's blindingly obvious they aren't available to fix domestic politics, isn't it?

I type this reply from my home office in Estonia, Northeastern Europe. I did witness massive brain drain before 2003 when Estonia joined the EU, and I have many (some are exceptionally well educated) friends who left the country afterwards. Just recently a very well educated young neurosurgeon I know made the decision to leave for pursuing the postgrad in Canada and then Switzerland, both countries outside the EU (oh snap, "bad EU" is not guilty this time). Should I blame Canada for a local provincial academic/research landscape? How can I punish them, maybe cheer for some of their trade block to collapse? Pathetic.

I'd rather double-think about my domestic electoral preferences and what can I personally do to transform my country so that more people (many already do) would consider returning. I don't follow who's forcibly beating Eastern European countries with their hands and how exactly: people move all the time in all directions for better opportunities. That's how it is, people move from Finland to Sweden, from Sweden to Norway, from Norway to Germany, etc. It's fine. It provides a much larger landscape of opportunities for different population slices. The EU has made this movement much easier, but Estonians supplied Finland with labor well before joining the EU. Today Russia/Ukraine/Belarus does the same to us, if you're entrepreneurial enough to take advantage of it.

At the same time, English is the main working language in a massive number of local technology companies[1], incl. Pipedrive, Transferwise, Starship Technologies, foreign offices of Twilio, Skype, etc. You meet well educated people from all over the EU (a lot of Spaniards, Portuguese, Swedes) and outer world (from Russia to Brazil) in the foyers of these offices. For some reason they reach Estonia with mediocre salaries by DE/SE/NL and even FI standards. Apparently, you being a tiny Eastern European country, still able to compete for talented brains, if you actually make efforts. So do efforts, don't look whom to blame.

> And as eastern europe does not have colonial past, there isn't large pool of brains that know local language and can be drained from third world to replace people who left.

LOL so what? The most ridiculous excuse I've heard. You don't have colonial past, but you have a pretty huge open bloc of well educated people all over the EU. Compete for them! And yes, this may require adjusting language and cultural requirements, just as Amsterdam is a booming international hub and pretty much an English speaking city today[2][3]. People don't learn German, Dutch, Finnish and Swedish overnight, and it's more often not really required.

> I think it's in interest of whole EU that best people stay in their countries. Instead of just sending money via cohesion funds, it should think about creating local opportunities for them.

No doubts in that, fully agreed. But it's not EU's obligation to supply your country with profitable enterprises and (say) Polish-speaking citizens. You have to make efforts to achieve this, not seeking to destroy the union for everyone else, because you couldn't.

[1] https://e-estonia.com/estonia-is-ranked-the-third-in-europe-...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-netherlands-fo...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-16/amster...

The thing most people don't realise is that the EU is almost completely undemocratic, which is pretty crazy when you think about it for a minute.

On the other hand it's also no surprise considering how it evolved: a producer's cartel for the coal and steel, and later agricultural, industries.

It's a miracle it even works so well as it does.

The EU actually signed a contract with AstraZeneca on August 27, a day earlier than the UK: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/17/europe/uk-astrazeneca-vac....

Again, this is simply not true. Yes, the UK signed one particular contract on Aug 28, so one day after the EU with AZ. However, the UK had a binding contract with AZ since May.

"However, the key lies in an earlier agreement that AstraZeneca made back in May with the U.K., which was a binding deal establishing “the development of a dedicated supply chain for the U.K.,” an AstraZeneca spokesperson said."

Quote is from this article: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...

> However, you can also see it as the EU has no real power at all and is just an easy target to get fooled over by other countries..

the position it finds itself in is entirely a result of its inability to competently and promptly negotiate contracts with its suppliers

it was entirely focused on price instead of delivery, and it took months more than the suppliers other customers (e.g. the UK) to agree anything

none of this is surprising behavior for an organisation that is primarily a producer's cartel

the mistake was putting such an organisation in charge of the procurement in the first place

the other outrageous fact is that France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands (the "Inclusive Vaccine Alliance") had all but signed a deal back in June, then the EU commission forced itself into the process, spent three months trying to re-negotiate (for a product being produced at cost), then signed the original deal regardless

It seems that they focused too much on price.

Like if a few cents or even a few euros per dose would make any difference considering the accruing cost of the pandemic.

Problems like these, availability of goods and distribution, are usually not solved by throwing money at them.

On the contrary, that's exactly how they are solved.

You can entice suppliers to serve you first by paying more than others, that's what Israel did.

I don't think that distribution is an issue but that can also be resolved by throwing money directly or through resources at it. Same for production and supply.

It was useless and counter-productive to drag negotiations to lower prices while throwing away 10s of billions a month to prop up locked down economies. It would have been more useful to work with suppliers to go all in on production with unlimited funds and resources so that as many factories as possible could produce (and that would have probably been cheaper overall).

Adding new production not only costs money, but also takes time. And while the EU has money, time was the problem. Risking to repeat myself, the initial orders were enough. And they took the existing production capacity i to account. Except some early prod hick ups, things were running rather smooth on the production end, until the public and media pressured the EU to increase order volumes.

I think the vaccine distribution will solve itself, not by throwing money at it but by the vaccine surplus we will have come June/July. It will be solved by throwing inventory at it, inventory covers up all kind of supply chain issues. Stringent supply management and control would be a lit faster and more efficient so. Ordering more probably made the problems worse, kind of like ehat happened with toilet paper a year ago.

The goal was not be the first to start, but to be fast to finish inoculation of the EU population. The initial ordering of the EU allowed that, everything member states and the EU did since January made this goal harder to achieve. And made it harder for developing countries to start their campaigns. All because the media knows shit about numbers, the politicians know shit about supply chains and everybody cares more about PR and elections than solving a problem.

Money doesn't always buy competence.

I do not care one single iota about who was first or paid most. What is clear is that people are dying unnecessarily because of this competition. The ethical thing would to be minimise the number of people dying of covid-19.

Distributing these vaccines evenly based upon risk factors (age, BMI, ...) is what should have happened. Practical example:

- My double marathon running, under 40 brother in law in Israel is low risk. He should not have received the vaccine yet, even if I like him.

- My heavily overweight 71 years old father is high risk. He should have received the vaccine already.

The EU, the UK, the US, Israel _and_ most of the manufacturers failed abysmally at this.

Straight out disagree. One of the most fundamental purposes of a country is to prioritize the interests (and most fundamentally life) of its own citizens.

If countries agreed on things like resource distribution, human rights, economic structure, reward incentives, culture, there would be no need for different nations.

This is purely a negotiation. "Ethics" is a weak appeal stemming from a failure to plan, invest, and execute.

The loyalties of a country's government should absolutely be with its constituents. That loyalty does not necessarily mean that the health of its inhabitants only should be the government's concern.

I can perfectly imagine a healthy 40 years old UK constituent supporting the idea that a 80 years old EU constituent should get priority over him. Or the other way round obviously, should that situation ever occur. Governments could take that into account, but we don't even have to go down that contentious rabbit hole to find points of consensus.

I just happen to think that an opportunity to reach a Pareto optimum was missed in negotiations, particularly between the UK and the EU.

Would an agreement on proportionality in vaccine distribution really have been so difficult between the EU and the UK for example? That would have produced real advantages for both sides.

Both governments can harm each other's vaccine supplies, and it's increasingly looking like that could also become reality. That's lose-lose instead of win-win.

> I do not care one single iota about who was first or paid most.

This is 100% guaranteed method to get shitty vaccine development and production in the future.

Money is the ultimate incentive - instead of haggling down they should have measured the cost of damages caused by delayed vaccination and tried to outbid.

This idiotic notion that we should prevent pharma companies from profiting on this is exactly why nobody wants to do vaccine development in the first place.

More than that they should have helped invest in production im hope that things would work. The US wwasn't known as a vaccine production power before, but with some investment we have a significant supply now.

Does that even make sense?

What if your 71 year old father is an agoraphobic hermit and your brother has some wonder job that puts him in a position to literally save the lives of other people as long as he's in close proximity to them.

I understand this is a hard to credit hypothetical but in those circumstances or similar ones we might want your brother at the head of the line. Not because he's more likely to die but because he's more likely to infect me. Or say, any hypothetical fellow citizen.

Frankly I think the most critical thing is to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible. Any other criteria should come after "as many as quickly." After that sure, have an argument over if more important to get people who might die vaccinated or people who might spread it vaccinated. Knock yourself out - but don't get in the way of the critical thing.

> Distributing these vaccines evenly based upon risk factors (age, BMI, ...) is what should have happened.

this is exactly what the UK has been doing?

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/17157/production...

I suspect the poster was saying that 80 year olds in India should receive the vaccination before 50 year olds in New York

> The ethical thing would to be minimise the number of people dying of covid-19.

Yes and when the EU delays signing contracts, and focuses so much on price, they cause more people to die from covid by slowing the process along.

I agree that the best way forward would have been to minimize deaths of covid, by them not worrying so much about prices and instead supporting development of the vaccine as quickly as possible.

Is that at all possible on the time scales we're talking about? It depends so much on the distribution networks, health services, willingness of population and everything else of each individual country.

Unless I read this wrong. You are seriously suggesting that we should do global risk-factor prioritization? Meaning that the 50year olds in New York are not allowed to take their doses until 70 year old anti-vaxxerss in the Slovenian alps have had theirs?

This is not true, the contract for EU and UK are largely the same. The EU even signed 1 day earlier.

This is FUD originating from AZ, which are downright lying.

No, this isn't FUD. AZ wasn't lying. Yes, it's true that the EU signed one particular contract one day before the UK on August 27. However, the UK had a binding contract with AZ since May already.

This quote is from this article: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...

The origin of the UKs priority access to the AZ vaccine was due to their early funding of the Oxford vaccine on condition of 1st priority. This was before AZ even got involved. In fact the UK govt had such deep involvement that they were able to veto a deal between Oxford and Merck to manufacture and distribute the vaccine over fears that it would allow Trump to block their priority access through export controls (as Merck would manufacture in the US) so the UK make Oxford partner with AZ. AZ inherited that pre-existing deal between Oxford and the UK govt.

AZ is lying:

Here the boss is telling the UK signed in june : https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-inno...

Except it didn't, the UK signed on august 28th, 1 day after the EU (per your link).

In the interview from my link he also says that no vaccines manufactured in the EU leave for countries outside of the EU.

Except he lies about that too: Italy prohibited the export of vaccines to Australia. Last i checked Australia is not a part of the EU.

Nobody is lying, the redacted agreements do indeed show that the UK agreement is dated to a day after the EU agreement but that says nothing about when money changed hands or prior deals or commitments. You get a 3 month difference between the UK and the EU because the UK had an agreement with AstraZeneca all the way back on the 17th of May (note: June -> Aug is not 3 months, that's sloppy reporting from your linked website) as can be seen here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/funding-and-manufacturing...

or here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/17/uk-plans-38m...

and this is on top of funding Oxford had received from the UK prior to the Oxford-AZ deal. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-03-24-oxfords-covid-19-resear...

Yet the publicly announced deal with the EU was on the 27th of August: https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/eu-pays-e3...

It should be noted at this point that France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, had jointly negotiated a deal with AZ in June but my understanding is that after an EU27 vote the EC took over negotiations and you get the final (and first for the EU) deal in August.

Why the redacted UK agreement is dated 28th of August is anybodies guess but some things should be made clear, firstly that the UK started funding AZ in May and not late August, secondly that they did this a month before other EU countries had reached an agreement with AZ, and finally that the EC getting involved added a further 2 months to the negotiation.

I'm not sure AZ said otherwise. I did check and you are correct about signing date.

However the devil as always is in the detail and the two contracts are different and best covered here: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...

Crux being the UK contract was a contractual commitment to deliver whilst the EU contract was best effort.

This link says that the contract are comparable: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/astrazeneca-signed-va...

I'm not sure that I would call the number of Pfitzer/BioNTech vaccines exported to young people in Israel fair so that they can party, while my parents inside the EU are waiting locked in for half a year now because they are scared of dying (and some of their friends already dead from COVID :( )

The EU decided to spend 750 billion euro of money it does not have (on credit - see [0]) for post-Covid recovery, but at the same time decided to save as much as possible on vaccines. I think that 'penny wise, pound foolish' applies. It would be unfair to Israel if they paid extra surcharge for their vaccines and later were told by European authorities "sorry, we will confiscate them, bad luck."

If we instead paid some 10 extra euro per dose, it would have added up to about 1 per cent of the planned recovery fund - and an extra factory or two could have been built during last autumn to start cranking out the vaccines by millions as soon as approved.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/eu-agrees-on-750-billion-euro-recovery...

Note that for a lot of countries, with perhaps less than competent governments, that money will end up right alongside where our tax money goes, in the hands of the corrupt.

It doesn't matter where the money goes in the grand scheme. What matters is that we have enough vaccines to end the pandemic. Whatever we needed to do to achieve this is what we should have done instead of worrying about hypothetical corruption and penny pinching.

Wow, you almost make it seem like Israel has done something wrong.

Nope, it was EU. the EU wanted to wait for final, concrete results before mass adoption.

The EU was very skeptical regarding the vaccines. the EU wanted to perform bulk orders as a union which complicated the ordering process.

The issue is not necessary the number of vaccines but the entire infrastructure to ship, cool and vaccinate people.

Israel had good existing infrastructure, willingness to pay up-front and high demand for the vaccine.

* will note that Israel also agreed to share vaccination data with Pfizer to locate any anomalies\problems

There's no issue with the infrastructure, the Pfizer vaccines are not coming, because Israel has priority. I'm not saying Israel did anything wrong, they are protecting their population and payed the price for it, while EU was trying to get the price of the vaccine down instead of thinking about the consequences of every lost day.

Also if infrastructure whould be a problem, US solved it by just hoarding vaccines: at the end of the year they had 40M Moderna vaccines on stock, they weren't able to use it, but they didn't give it to other countries.

France, a while back, was receiving good numbers but were failing to keep up in terms of demand\infrastructure.

I think now EU is far more active when it comes to the efforts but initially, they were not.

It seems like there is more resistance in the EU to vaccination and data sharing than in Israel.

France has no problem vaccinating people, they just adjust their strategy based on deliveries.

If you look here https://covidtracker.fr/vaccintracker/ you'll see that on the second graph, the blue curves (vaccination) closely follow the gray curve (deliveries).

And while France is one of the most anti-vaccine countries in the world, there is still no shortage of people wanting to be vaccinated.

In the end, I just think it is just the result of negotiations. Now, it is essentially a zero-sum game, the only way to get more doses is to take it from others, and the EU wasn't as aggressive. We will all get vaccines in the end, it is just about how much you value your head start.

There's resistance to AstraZeneca vaccine, and in my country (Hungary) to Sinopharm and SPUTNIK-V. Russian troops invaded Hungary in the past, so there's not much trust in a Russian vaccine, we trust the EU and US more, but the government is laundering lots of money by getting vaccines from the east (they payed $31 per dose for Sinopharm vaccine)

You're looking at thing as they are now.

Now, as I've said, there's demand\need since the EU scaled up the vaccination efforts however, look back 3-5 months.

EU was discussing just how to split\manage the vaccines among the union members, while Israel was vaccinating at a neck-breaking pace.

While my family in EU were not sure if they want to be vaccinated, people in Israel were waiting hours in line to even get a chance to get vaccinated.

Israel currently has over 80% of the population vaccinated, I'm willing to bet that even if you provide that number of vaccines to any European country, the numbers will be far lower.

The United States was the first country to approve the Moderna vaccine. If the US "wasn't able to use it" then neither was any other country.

Israel paid a LOT more for the vaccine to ensure early supply.

They are also tiny - a lot smaller than you might think, they are not really hogging all that much supply in terms of absolute numbers.

And finally they agreed to be the research study for the world, so what they are doing does have value, even for your parents in the EU. In particular they will answer the question: If you immunize everyone does COVID stop?

“Fair” isn’t well defined at the best of times.

I certainly want this all over ASAP, the vaccination isn’t as fast as I want; my biggest concern right now is the overlap between anti-mask-and-and-lockdown protestors and anti-vaccination protestors.

I wish anti-vaccination protest would be real, that would mean that I would get my own vaccine faster, but I don't see that happening.

> the EU is trying to be good and is sharing its vaccinations more or less fairly with other countries

The AstraZeneca factory in the Netherlands is owned by AstraZeneca, not the EU commission. World War 2 ended a long time ago.

Pfizer and Moderna production factories in the US are not owned by the government either, but they are prohibited from exporting a single dose of vaccine until the US government has enough doses to vaccinate the entire US population.

If that was a condition of the contract between two parties and the two parties agreed, then what's the problem?

This is a pretty weird kind of contract?

Executive Order 13962—Ensuring Access to United States Government COVID-19 Vaccines December 08, 2020

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/12/11/2020-27...

First of all, I don't know if this is purely contractual or not. Perhaps it is, perhaps it's not. But I remember earlier in the vaccination campaign the news talked about how the companies will be free to export after they have fulfilled their 100-million-dose obligation to the US, but later that changed to 300-million doses. Perhaps this was part of the original contact, perhaps it was forced on them later on. Regardless:

The problem with this approach is that if this becomes the norm, which so far it seems it will, the next pandemic, the rest of the world will be mega super screwed. Right now, the saving grace of us folks in Canada is that the EU, unlike US and UK, did not prohibit vaccine exports. If they had put the same barriers, we Canadians (as well as most other nations on earth) would have had to wait for the great powers (US/UK/EU) to finish vaccinating their 16-year olds before we could start vaccinating our 90-year olds. So many would have died who would have survived if the vaccines were shared between countries based on population or elderly demographics. It would have been a net gain for US/UK/EU, a net loss for Canada/etc and a net loss for the world as a whole. That's because when you prioritize not-at-risk population from country A over at-risk population from country B, for every A citizen you save, you cause 7900 citizens from country B to die [0].

Also, let's not pretend any country could have signed such a contract with the vaccine manufacturers. If Canada tried to sign a contract with a US manufacturer that said they would give Canada their 96-million-dose contract before selling a single dose to the US, I bet the US government would have ripped the contact to shreds and imposed their own rules on it. Only the countries in which the vaccine producers are located can sign such contracts. So in practice, there is little difference between contract and rule-making in terms of who can do it and what the outcomes are.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...

Yea... idk how I feel about this. It's definitely the responsibility of a country to protect its citizens first and foremost above all others. On the other hand, maybe once the majority of what would be considered at-risk is vaccinated then a country could export vaccines, but that's really just the prerogative of the country. As a citizen of the U.S. I would be livid if we were exporting vaccines to other countries before we were mostly vaccinated here in my country. It would also severely undermine trust in the U.S. government and give fuel to those who seek to isolate the country from the rest of the world. What better example of "put others ahead of your own countrymen" could you make up?

Anyway - the US is exporting vaccines to Mexico and Canada [1]. You should (as a Canadian) start to see lots of vaccine shipments come in from the U.S. as the supply chain juggernaut awakens. I'm not sure what help Canada will actually get from the EU. So far I've seen little in the way of actual numbers.

I see the U.S. and U.K. looking very strong after initially not so great reactions to the virus.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-to-send-combined-...

So why are doses of AZ vaccine produced in the US not exported despite the fact that AZ vaccine is not approved in the US?

They are https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/17/politics/us-astrazeneca-mexic...

It was an Executive Order that compelled this, not contracts.

Halix is an independent contractor, AZ is not the owner at all.

The Netherlands/EU can ban exports of certain items, they can even nationalize factories if they wanted to.

At this point I think it would be the best that they did, pay AZ/pfizer/moderna royalties but just use the military in a WW2 style effort to produce as many dosages possible.

As a Canadian it's certainly contributing to my goodwill toward the EU. We'd be SOL if they were taking the same approach as the US.

In about 2 months I suspect the US is going to flooding Canada/Mexico with vaccine doses.

Canada will, with luck, already be half done with the first dose in two months. But yes, there's likely to be a surfeit in the entire developed world by July or so. The domestically manufactured Canadian vaccine for example, if approved, will likely end up primarily exported.

I agree, as at that point it will be in their self-interest to do so. So yes, we wouldn't be completely SOL, just in rougher shape than we are.

I certainly understand the desire to keep doses within the country. I don't even necessarily blame the administration for doing so. But I do appreciate the EU giving us the opportunity to vaccinate our seniors prior to 18 year olds in the US.

Currently 25% of the US population has one dose of the vaccine. That is way beyond Canada and most other countries, but the US is far from vaccinating 18 year olds.

That's true. I don't expect them to allow Pfizer to export vaccine until they have though.

When you are in a crisis, the first thing you do is put the oxygen mask on yourself. The crisis in the UK and the US has been severe and it does not help to spread the vaccine around peanut butter style across every country in the world such that only 5% of the population has it.

If anything else, we should be focusing it more on single countries impacted the most to get their essential workers and most impacted covered before moving on to a next one.

Actually, "putting the oxygen mask on yourself" would be the equivalent to vaccinating your medical staff, not your whole friggin country.

The US and UK don't fare much worse than the rest of the EU, per capita, do they?

USA+ UK = 34 million cases, EU=24 million cases.

The biggest problem with vaccine mercantilism is if we don't rationally share the vaccine, the vaccine technology and means of production, then the fact we vaccinated 100% of one country will be useless in 2 years with all the variants mutating in less fortunate countries.

Somehow, the EU plan to over purchase (which they did already end of 2020, early 2021) and share surplus vaccines withe developing countries to avoid exactly that gets completely ignored.

No, most western countries that bought vaccines “over purchased” for this same reason too. For example the UK has purchased 400M doses so far. This PR piece summarises this objective. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-government-secures-add...

> we don't rationally share the vaccine,

By the end of 2021, do you really think that'll still be a problem?

Vaccine shortage is a problem right now. But the end of 2021 we'll have vaccines by the billions.

As for the next mutation, we'll likely have the productions capacity. The question becomes if a vaccine can be developed fast?

It certainly helps to vaccinate the most vulnerable people in all countries, instead of vaccinate everyone in certain countries first.

Apparently the rest of the world, in particular many non-western nations, are not being hit as hard by covid as the US. So it makes sense to roll it out as fast as possible where people are getting the most lethal infections.

The US is exporting vaccines (AstraZeneca) to Canada and Mexico.

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-va...

Not "is exporting", but "plans to send", quite different. Meanwhile EU exported at least 3.9 million doses to Canada, 3.1 million doses to Mexico [1]

https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=2252

Yes and AZ vaccine is not even approved in the US...

In France at least I believe there was (and probably still is) also a distribution problem.

Also health authorities flip-flopping on the benefits and side effects is disastrous from an adoption point of view. First it is not efficient for people over 65, then it is, then it will only be distributed to people over 50, then it is dangerous, then it is not dangerous anymore. You couldn't manufacture reluctance to getting vaccinated more if you wanted to.

Distribution is OK. The main problem is the availability of the approved vaccine doses. AZ vaccine is easy to move around, at near 0°C.

As for the flip-flopping, it’s the usual media game. High public expectations, low delivery.

What is really annoying is that french pharma has not been able to invent a vaccine or at least able to manufacture someone else’s.

The EU didn’t make them, companies with facilities in the EU did. They were exported because the EU managed to delay its procurement process and other countries made their orders earlier.

No country is making vaccines, yet are allowing for their production and exporting. Well, some countries at least, in this case the EU, China, India and Russia so far. The only countries that haven't allowed exports are USA and UK.

The EU could take both the US or the UK route to prevent these exports:

- The EU could rightfully, and has the power to, prevent exports that are essential in a period of crises - which clearly applies to the current situation in Europe. This is the USA route, and it's legitimate.

- The EU can control AZ exports to guarantee they are fulfilling their contractual obligations, which AZ has been literally joking in the face of the EU. This is the UK route, and it's legitimate.

What the media is currently reporting is the second one, the EU is forcing the manufacturer to comply with their contract. If this overlaps with the UK contract, well then that's something I believe the UK must deal with the manufacturer like the EU has been doing for the past 3 months.

I just don't get the double standards, the UK enforcing a contract is good... the EU doing the same is... bad?

> I just don't get the double standards, the UK enforcing a contract is good... the EU doing the same is... bad?

Well, it looks like British tabloids are influencing this point of view in English speaking countries.

This is one thing that I've never noticed until the whole vaccine endeavor started, the amount of propaganda British tabloids pump it's mind boggling and quite honestly scary.

They tailor narratives and pump the crap out of it, even if it contains wrong information or if it's things completely irrelevant of what's being discussed but that supports the narrative.

> The EU can control AZ exports to guarantee they are fulfilling their contractual obligations, which AZ has been literally joking in the face of the EU

Using such executive powers for handling contract dispute is authoritarian move. These powers should be used for impartial regulation of market, not for contract dispute where EC is one side. In liberal democracies, contract disputes even with government are handled by courts.

It's as authoritarian as what the US or UK did, or many other countries when they limited the exports of PPE and some medicines.

Such rules are in an emergency scenario - which the EU currently is in, with third waves all over Europe, and a lot of the vulnerable citizens yet to be vaccinated due to the terrible job AZ has been doing.

If there's a time to trigger these mechanisms is now.

You're just trying to reframe this into a way of controlling the market, which is wrong and biased. This is already beyond a contract dispute, it's about saving lives, and the cost is to make a single pharmaceutical company accountable for their mistakes and their promises.

Just like the UK is doing what it needs to do to have his contract fulfilled to save british lives, by not allowing exports of AZ vaccine by enforcing the contract that's making AZ partially fail the EU contract, the EU will use it's own mechanisms to ensure the safety of EU citizens.

> Just like the UK is doing what it needs to do to have his contract fulfilled

the UK isn't doing anything special. they just signed a better contract than the other guys.

what the EU should have done is recognised their mistake and fix it via a massive injection of funds. instead they decided to fund the recovery and penny-pinch on the vaccines.

in any case, this whole non-issue is politicising of the lowest degree. the EU will get more vaccines than Africa or Asia as a whole in a few weeks, making this whole discussion moot.

The rules allowing are already done.

The executive implements those rules.

> The EU didn’t make them, companies with facilities in the EU did.

If you want to play this game, then companies didn't but EU citizens that work at those factories did create them.

...and because politicians in the EU told citizens it might be dangerous. Fine, believe all the conspiracy theories about the UK stealing vaccines...the EU has literally millions of doses sitting around going unused because citizens won't take it (it is almost verging on mania: in Germany I have heard that 50% of health workers at some hospitals who had the vaccination are calling in sick after getting the vaccine).

I am not sure why there is even a discussion on these points: the EU was late, and once they were late they did almost everything wrong (unsurprisingly, countries in Europe have a terrible record on vaccines)...that is it.

> the EU has literally millions of doses sitting around going unused because citizens won't take it

This is utterly false. The vaccine is being used as quickly as it comes in. As of yesterday, more than 75% of all doses delivered to Germany have been administered. (Source: https://impfdashboard.de/) this includes the slow-down from temporarily halting the use of AstraZeneca.

Just 75%...wow...so low. The UK is doing close to 1m/day. Germany has what, ~1.4m that aren't being used. Amazing that people accept it.

Unfortunately I couldn‘t find a source for how many doses have been delivered to the UK so it‘s hard to draw a comparison.

While the UK is vaccination their population at 3.5x the rate of Germany, the majority of that is due to the lack of supplies. If Germany was vaccinating at a rate of 750k/day, ever dose would be applied in 5 days. Considering big deliveries only happen ~1/week this is neither feasible nor desirable.

They are keeping some as a reserve to deliver the second dose according to the recommended regimen since they cannot rely on the manufacturer sticking to the negotiated shipment rates.

also AstraZeneca failed to deliver to EU in a big way. 70% less than agreed!!! at the same time AZ exported vaccines from EU. i hope EU will take legal action against AZ

i hope EU will take legal action against AZ

The APA explicitly states that the EU side waives any claim against AZ arising from delays in delivery of the vaccine. What legal action do you think the EU can or should take, and why?

It seems they are starting legal actions: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BA1CF

Not quite. They are starting the prescribed dispute resolution process, as set out in the agreement. If that fails, they would still have to take AZ to court, and presumably then the restrictions on claims also set out in the agreement would apply.

Especially if the delay is caused by additional orders from the EU.

What's interesting about this comment is that it demonstrates the core sources of sclerosis in the EMU. Instead of engaging in a careful investigation to identify roadblocks to the rollout, removing said roadblocks, and then engaging in some soul-searching as to why these roadblocks are there, one immediately starts denouncing their favorite villains, blaming them and while at the same time indulging in fantasies of moral superiority to compensate for one's failures.

"Yes, comrade, we have no toilet-paper, but we do not exploit toiler-paper workers!"

It's obvious why this type of casuistry is so appealing to the powerless, but what's scary is when those in leadership become slaves of the same memes - that's when you know that things will only get much, much worse - as owning your failures is a pre-requisite to learning from them, which is a pre-requisite for effective reform. The EU is a system to grow bureaucracy but reform is effectively blocked by the moralizers. Thus, things will continue to get worse until the all the sanctimonious people are kicked out of office or until the society itself collapses under the massive weight of moralistic bureaucrats.

The EU started this particular game of iterative prisoner's dilemma with the assumption of cooperation. That trust in was betrayed in the first round, and now we're seeing the reaction. Considering the supply chains cross many borders, there is a good chance this will now escalate further, and total production capacity may well be harmed as a result, which is exactly why cooperation was the first choice. It may have been naive in a practical sense to assume that Johnson and, at the time, Trump would be capable of thinking two steps ahead. But getting burned on an assumption of good faith isn't exactly the worst thing in the world. Plus, once the US, UK, and Israel are done, and with more capacity coming on-line, the spigot will turn to the EU and the difference may end up being far smaller than one might think from just extrapolating current data.

And the Pfizer production relies on Lipids that are produced in the UK, along with other products produced elsewhere.

Moderna is made in Switzerland and then goes to Spain for finishing does that make it an EU or Swiss export?

We all need to cooperate to succeed.

Given the relative country sizes it's weird that the EU seems to have comparatively less vaccine production

And if the EU really wants to 'put the issue to bed' why don't they just publish the export numbers but vaccine type and country?

>"Meanwhile, the UK and US do not export any vaccines at all."

This is untrue. The US in the process of exporting 4 million doses of vaccine between Mexico and Canada[1].

The US has also said that once they have ensured that there is enough vaccine supply for all Americans(likely around May 1st)it will begin exporting any surplus in the summer.[2] The US has not met that target of enough vaccines for its population.

The reality is that US and EU took very different approaches towards vaccine procurement. The US government acted more like an investor and threw insane sums of cash at the drugmakers with very few strings attached and the EU sought lower prices and higher accountability for drug makers. There were very different risk profiles between the two. In the end the EU placed their orders months after the US, the UK and Israel. Ursula von der Leyen seems quite content to shift the blame everywhere else and propagate the view that the EU is being taken advantage of.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-va...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/biden-moves-up-vaccine-tim...

My bad, I didn't realise the EU was already a socialist dystopia which owned what is produced by their private citizens.

The EU bureaucrats were simply worse at negotiating contracts and doing their job.

The UK is exporting vaccine components to the EU though.

source?

> Those EU facilities are in turn dependent on vaccine inputs — such as the lipid nanoparticles needed in mRNA vaccines and the plastic bags used in bioreactors — some of which are imported from the UK and the US. [0]

(I believe that some UK companies supply the lipids)

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/773245da-900a-468e-aaf3-96ec8c433...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14400027/pfizer-warns-eu-threa...

Block AZ in the EU, you'll force the populist Johnson into tit-for-tat retaliation - and we'll all go to hell in a hand-cart.

This has been debunked, it's just rumors with no support, both Pfizer and BioNTech secured critical supplies in the beginning of the year for EU production - internally in Europe (2 German companies if I recall correctly), from Canada, and from the UK.

At best banning those exports would just harm the production of surplus vaccines/exports. It would be the UK crippling their own supply of vaccines - which they have received 10 million so far from Pfizer made in Belgium.

I agree such a move would be somewhat self destructive. But given the uk is already >50% with a 1st dose, and has Moderna contracts supplying from next month, I would not rule it out.

I also would point out: Boris, aka mini-trump. Populists would not let such a challenge go without reply.

Good luck if you think the report is completely wrong.

It's not a rumour, Pfizer said it: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/half-uk-adults-receive-fir...

I'm sure they are not completely dependent on UK supplies, but by the sounds of it, it will cause them some issues.

Either way, I very much doubt that's a card that UK wish to play.

the sun LMAO, stop reading British tabloids

You don't think Croda are important then?

Or that this deal doesn't exist? https://www.business-live.co.uk/manufacturing/croda-covid-va...

I expect this whole thing will result in the EU getting a similar law as the US and less cooperation.

The EU has exported 41 millionen vaccine doses of which the UK has gotten 8 million so far

Not “the EU”. Private companies with factories in European countries fulfilled pre-orders placed and paid for months ago. “The EU” owns no factories and produces no vaccines itself.

> the EU is trying to be good and is sharing its vaccinations more or less fairly with other countries (for now)

What's fair about it? The number of exported vaccines would account for only 10% of EU population, by your own admission. Since the poor countries in need of vaccine are from Africa and Asia (mostly), they most definitely have much greater populations. What's fair about exporting just 10% of vaccines?

Export? USA and UK bought those vaccines a year ago from Pfizer, Moderna, J&J and AstraZeneca. Warp Speed, USA gambled and the world is better because of it.

They are contracts and dates on which x million doses are to be delivered by. Why didn't EU do the same? Crying now it's too late and a trade war can go both ways. Say, no vaccine would be produced unless a certain item that is produced in USA goes to a Belgium factory.

The USA negociated more slowly than the EU. The UK signed a research deal before the EU but didn't order until a week later.

The only difference is that the EU remained truthful to the free market while both the USA and the UK put country first closes.

> Crying now it's too late and a trade war can go both ways.

There are no trade wars. Both the USA and the UK have shown themselves to be extremely unreliable partners which will not respect the rules they profess to believe in as soon as it doesn't favor them. That was already obvious with Trump and is only more obvious now.

I fully expect the USA to lose its place as the main global power in the next decade if not sooner. The UK will probably pay the price a lot sooner as the EU is not going to forget and they have no other reliable ally.

> The USA negociated more slowly than the EU.

The US signed their AZ deal months before the EU and UK. They threw billions of dollars at every company they could find, readily paying high rates while other countries tried to negotiate lower ones. So I'm really not sure where this idea of yours comes from.

$1.2 Billion to AZ in May: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/05/21/trump-administrati...

EU's deal was signed in August: https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/az-nets-396m-down...

$1.95 Billion to Pfizer in July: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/health/was-the-pfizer-vac...

EU's deal with Pfizer was in November: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

Minor nitpick but the UK signed a deal with AZ a couple of days before the US, it was the EU that was 3 months late to the party.

Clicking through your second link you get to the article about the US deal on the 21st of May: https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/astrazeneca-scores-1b-fr...

and again for the UK deal on the 17th of May: https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/after-signing-up-to-deli...

Didn't Italy just recently tried to block exports to Australia?

OK, show me a press release mentioning orders, contracts.

"The EU reached a deal with Pfizer in November for 300 million doses and in January negotiated a preliminary deal for another 300 million." https://www.dw.com/en/eu-orders-300-million-more-biontech-pf...

USA agreed to buy 100-500 Million in JULY 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/22/health/pfizer-covid-19-va...

The fact is that EU is too slow, too risk adverse and 28 countries must agree. In USA the President winks, and it's done. (In this case it was beneficial.)

> The fact is that EU is too slow, too risk adverse and 28 countries must agree.

Not strictly true, as for these purposes the UK was still bound by EU rules until Jan 1st this year and did its own thing for the vaccinations without breaking those rules.

The EU nations generally like to work together and negotiate as one, as doing so saves money; money was the wrong thing to optimise for in this case.

> The EU nations generally like to work together and negotiate as one, as doing so saves money; money was the wrong thing to optimise for in this case.

Right. Probably should have optimized for human life. Hindsight is 20/20.

Au contraire.

This way of looking at things ignores the astonishing cost of maintaining emergency support payments to people and businesses, which are significantly more expensive than the price differential on vaccines. Ireland's spending over a million euro per hour on that and will now be forced to do so for thousands of additional hours.

How did the UK govt (not the private Swedish-British company AstraZeneca) show itself to be an unreliable partner? Be as specific as possible.

I want to get your view and if I think it’s valid, I want to pass it onto my MP, to put democratic pressure for the UK to maintain its status of a rules-based society.

> There are no trade wars.

There are trade wars, and there will continue to be.

> Both the USA and the UK have shown themselves to be extremely unreliable partners which will not respect the rules they profess to believe in as soon as it doesn't favor them.

That's rich coming from the folks responsible for GDPR. You pollute our web, and then cry about things that don't favor you? Boo-hoo.

The web was already polluted. GDPR only removed the facade and now you see the ugliness that was behind it.

GDPR has added unsightly boilerplate to our shared web experience. You've only succeeded in expanding our attack surface.

> Why didn't EU do the same?

Germany gave BioNTech 445M. The US didn't give Pfizer/BioNTech anything.

The US did, actually, by placing a firm order for vaccines.

So did many other countries. The US is getting those doses faster by preventing the Pfizer factories in the US from exporting any doses, so they have no choice but to sell all of that supply to the US. That's why Canada is getting all of the Pfizer/BioNTech doses it purchased from the Belgium factory rather than one right across the border in the US.

> The US is getting those doses faster by preventing the Pfizer factories in the US from exporting any doses

With democrat president? Who would have thought.

The order was far from firm, Pfizer would have gotten $0 from the order if the vaccine didn't pass trials.

Far from firm? If I sign a contract to buy apples from you 6 months from now, but you show up with apple seeds, was my order not firm if I don't pay you?

The fact is when Pfizer showed up with a vaccine, they knew they could sell $2 billion to the US and would have legal recourse if the US government didn't pay. That's as firm as it gets.

The EU did the same and they were also the ones funding the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. But I agree with your other comment about the US. The EU should have done the same. Restrict all exports to other countries until x million is delivered domestically.

The EU did sign contracts. Unfortunately AstraZeneca is not going to be able to fulfill the contract, only delivering 30m out of 80m doses in Q1, with an even bigger shortfall expected for Q2.

https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1372897665864830978

But since they were so late in getting that contract signed AZ were only able to promise a best effort at delivery.

True, the EU even waived its right to sue because delivery delays.

"And as POLITICO reported last week, the non-redacted version of the contract shows that the EU also waived its right to sue AstraZeneca in the event of delivery delays."

Quote from this article: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...

UK contract is also on a “best effort” basis.

They signed 1 dey before the UK, which also got a 'best effort' contract.

what's the point of a contract that's not enforceable? if EU has to resort to export bans after the fact, sounds like someone somewhere didn't do basic due diligence. companies aren't going to deliver just out of the goodness of their hearts.

> what's the point of a contract that's not enforceable?

That's why the USA didn't bother ordering rapidely. They knew they could use the defense act and executive orders to block exports and they did as soon as they could. Even Canada is buying vaccines in Belgium.

The UK was wise. They prevented Oxford associating with Merks and forced them to partner with AstraZeneca. That's the key take away from the pfizer debacle and the Nordstream interferences. Europe needs to strike American companies hard and push them out of the European market as fast as possible. The USA is not our ally.

Thanks for linking to this thread, it was insightful.

AstraZeneca also exported EU stockpiles to the UK leading to this shortfall.

The EU also hadn't approved the vaccine when those stockpiles were exported, and it was to compensate for UK domestic production shortfalls which the EU suffered from a few months later due in large part to the Commission delaying the contract. The UK got precedence because they were first in line and the EU couldn't yet use the vaccines.

Apparently not many doses have been exported from Halix in NL, and they have a stockpile of doses

I honestly think no one wanted to sign with the Trump admin. Remember, when the vaccines were being developed and worked on everyone was complaining about Trump rushing the vaccines and how they weren't going to be safe nor effective. If the EU signed on early they would be giving approval to Trump before the results were in.

The EU has received more than 62 million doses (of all vaccines) and has more than 10 million doses in stock.

They've also created problems to the AZ vaccine at every turn. So much so that now some people simply refuse it.

So if they hadn't shipped 8 million doses to the UK (where that vaccine was developed with public funds) there is no guarantee at all that they would have vaccinated 8 million more people.

Edit with non-UK source (as of 2 weeks ago):

"Millions of Vaccines in EU Unused (March 11, 10:00 a.m. ET) More than 11.5 million Covid vaccine doses that have been delivered to European Union countries have not yet been used, according to Bloomberg. The number of shots sent by manufacturers now totals 54.2 million, compared to 46 million a week previously. The data covers the week to March 7. [1]

[1] https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/31024-coronavirus-...

I believe several EU Countries have still not cleared AZ for use on (false?) fears of blood clots. And then there is the problem of distribution - not so easy in a place as large as the EU.

First some countries refused to give the AZ vaccine to people over 65, then they recklessly suspended it altogether, now some countries refuse to give it to people under 55. That's ridiculous.

Distribution is no more a problem than in the UK. The EU has probably the best infrastructure in the world and vast resources, while being smaller than the US.

That's ridiculous.

No vaccination for ages over 65 while there is insufficient data on efficacy in those groups, briefly suspend vaccination with new drug while evaluating reports of unexpected side effects, release of the vaccine to age groups that are least effected by those side effects.

I agree that all three decisions are wrong, but I don't think they're ridiculous. Just overly cautious.

They are keeping some as a reserve to deliver the second dose according to the recommended regimen since they cannot rely on the manufacturer sticking to the negotiated shipment rates.

Way to go on repeating UK media disinformation.

You keep repeating the same claim in this thread, a claim that runs counter to citations you are provided with and here you are, yet to provide any reliable sources of your own

Sure.

Here you go - https://www.france24.com/en/20200613-covid-19-france-italy-g...

The Vaccine Alliance did a contract with AstraZeneca before the UK. The Alliance was Germany, Italy, Netherlands and France.

AstraZeneca says this "doesn't count". I believe this was around 1 month before the UK agreement was signed.

Here's another article that goes over it https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-s...

And here's the press release up on Reuters https://www.france24.com/en/20200613-covid-19-france-italy-g...

https://uk.ambafrance.org/Inclusive-Vaccines-Alliance-reache...

And in the French embassy..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com